


Each Happy Ending Is A Brand New Beginning

by sunspot (unavoidedcrisis)



Category: Leverage
Genre: Curtain Fic, F/M, Fluff, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-19
Updated: 2011-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-27 13:41:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/296457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unavoidedcrisis/pseuds/sunspot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens after, when the team wants to make 'normal' lives for themselves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Each Happy Ending Is A Brand New Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks waterofthemoon for the excellent beta job, as per usual. <3

Parker and Hardison buy a house in the suburbs, a big, old one that needs a ton of renovations to make it habitable.

They love that stupid house so much that it inspires the rest of the crew. Sophie and Nate buy a house just a few doors down and it's only been six months after they move in when Eliot finally caves and moves into the apartment that Parker had insisted be built over their garage for him.

It's nothing like the old days.

The old days are long gone.

These days are a lot better, for the most part.

No one calls Hardison by his last name any more, unless it's Eliot and he's really frustrated. Hardison was a kid, a smart-ass computer hacker with a big chip on his shoulder. Alec misses him sometimes, but he is so much more deliriously happy as 'Alec, the IT supervisor' than he ever was as a criminal. Sure, he still hacks on weekends, but that's only to keep busy. He figures it has a lot to do with coming home every night to his gymnastics teacher wife and his kids. Just a theory he's been working on.

Cory and Quinn aren't Parker's kids, of course, but they call her _mom_ and are still too young to really ask questions. Parker and Alec split up for a while, after the team stopped taking on jobs. Things got too serious, too fast, Parker said, and Alec didn't see her for two years after that. Stacey was a damn far cry from Parker, but she was there, and in the first few months after Leverage, geography was the only thing Alec cared about.

The first few weeks back together is rocky as hell. Logically, they both know Parker can't be upset because _she_ broke up with _him_ , but feelings still get hurt, and there's a lot of tension in the apartment for a while. It's when Alec gets home a lot later than he should have one night to find the baby sitter gone and Parker and his boys watching Monsters Inc. and eating liquorice in a blanket fort that he knows things are going to be okay. That's when they buy the house. They get married at city hall few months later and wait a week before they tell anyone.

That's before Eliot comes back because he would have kicked their asses for hiding it from him. When he finally does, he has a limp and a couple nasty scars and as much as Parker hints that she wants the whole story, he never does tell them. The first few months with him back is uncomfortable too, like the whole team needs to learn to live with each other again. Even with all the craziness and the tension, it just feels good to be together again. They're a family, as much as they never planned on it.

Every second Sunday, they all spend the day at Nate and Sophie's place. They do some fully saccharine activity in the afternoon -- apple picking or a snowball fight or a trip to the beach -- and in the evening, Eliot and Sophie cook something and they all watch a movie.

The first time that Quinn sleepily looks up and calls Nate 'Grandpa' is hilarious, touching and heart breaking all at once. Nate kisses his forehead and waves Eliot off when it's time to carry the sleeping kids out to the car. Nate does it himself, and no one says a word because they aren't sure if they're supposed to.

Later that night, Nate manages to hold back his tears, but only barely, and Sophie holds his hand and says nothing because she was sure that's what she's supposed to do.

\--

Today is a bright, sunny Sunday, and Hardison is playing with his sons on the lawn, running back and forth through the sprinkler and pretending they're all monsters. Parker hides from the sun under the striped pink umbrella and reads a book.

"Were we ever that happy?" Nate asks Sophie. They're sitting at the glass patio table with Eliot, who graciously pretends he can't hear them.

"I think we might have been? It was a different kind of happy, for us, back when we were that age." Sophie's being polite. She doesn't think Nate's ever been that happy, not even now. He tells her sometimes, late into the night when they lie in bed and he kisses her shoulders, how happy he is. She always feels like asking him to prove it, but she doesn't want to start a fight just for the sake of fighting.

Cory runs over with what he calls 'a funny rock,' and his eyes just gleam when he pushes it into Nate's hand. "You like rocks, right, Grandpa?"

Sophie thinks she might be wrong because she knows Nate isn't a secret amateur geology enthusiast, but his eyes have the same gleam that Cory's do. "Thanks," Nate says, examining the rock closely. "I love it." Cory beams at him and drags Uncle Eliot off to play.

She briefly considers asking Nate if he wants another kid of his own, but she knows that would not go over well, and she doesn't want to ruin what has thus far been a great afternoon. Sophie kisses his cheek sweetly while he turns the rock over and over in his hand and goes inside to start dinner.

The screen door bangs open and closed again a little while later while she's hulling strawberries over the sink. She thinks it's Eliot, so she nods to the cream on the counter without looking up. "Get whipping, dear." Bright, red berry juice drips from her fingers and when she licks them clean and tastes the fruit, she knows she got the best job of the night.

"If that's what you want, Soph," Nate says, dropping one arm around her waist and kissing her neck. "But later, when the kids are gone." He says kids to refer to all of them, not just the ones in the yard under the age of six.

Sophie laughs and turns in his arms, letting him catch a drip of strawberry juice on his lips. "What is it?" she asks. "You rarely want to help out in the kitchen."

"I was thinking," he says, like he's admitting a dirty secret. "About happiness and all that." He presses the rock into Sophie's hand.

"Nate?"

"Sophie, I'd really like if you would marry me. It's been too long and I think I owe you your _happily ever after_."

Nate explains later that a diamond is basically just a fancy rock, and isn't a rock that one of their almost-grandkids found for them the fanciest rock around? He says he got sucked in by the spontaneity and the romanticism of it. Sophie says yes, but that the rock will stay on the mantle for everyone to see and she wants a real diamond, thank you very much.

\--

The wedding is small -- just 'the kids', the one of Sophie's sisters she still talks to, and Maggie. Maggie is almost as thrilled as they are and she thanks them for inviting her with tears in her eyes at the end of the night.

Eliot bakes the cake, even though he claims he hates baking, and god knows why, but he agrees to let Parker decorate it. She pulls some of her favourite stolen jewellery from storage and the cake ends up looking like a background dancer in a rap video, but Sophie loves it. They put up white Christmas lights on the patio in the backyard and Quinn proclaims it suitable for a fairyland wedding with wide, brown eyes.

It's long after the guests have left and Hardison and the twins have fallen asleep on the lounge chair. Eliot is laughing softly while he teaches Parker how to waltz, even though it's obvious she's stepping on his feet on purpose. Sophie would have something dry and witty to say if she had noticed them at all, but she's too busy dancing quietly with Nate and marvelling at just how different her life is turning out from what she originally thought it would be.

"Is this really happy ever after?" Sophie whispers, smiling into Nate's dress shirt.

"I don't know if there's such a thing," he admits, "but I think this is as close as we're going to get."

"It has to be." She brushes loose hair from her face and smiles. Sophie gestures around them, their strange little family and their pretty, old house, and then down at her simple blue dress. "Because I think it's really a fairytale. White knight, black king and all that."

"Maybe you're right," he says, knowing full well that she is. He can't tell her she's right, that she's always been right about everything, this early into the marriage. They have years and years ahead of them for him to tell her that every day. He'll start in the morning. Tonight he just says "I love you," and kisses her again.


End file.
